In the weeks leading up to my recent wedding, my fiancee and I were throwing out all kinds of ideas about wedding favors. We tried looking on TheKnot, but in all honesty most of the favors we saw there were kind of hackneyed. TheKnot.com tends to favor, no pun intended, vendors who pay them a lot of money, so you’ll more likely see cheap mass-produced favor ideas than really unique ones.

I’ve been to a lot of weddings in my life, and for the most part the favors I get aren’t very useful. I’ve gotten countless coasters, but somehow I still end up putting my glass on a napkin. I’ve gotten crystal paperweights, but my desk isn’t near a window so there’s no chance of my papers blowing off (and if there were, I’d sooner use a stapler to hold the papers down).

It’s funny, but by far the most useful wedding favor I’ve ever gotten in my life was a set of metal chopsticks. Whenever I order Chinese food, I bring those out and use them. Other than that, wedding favors usually end up in a closet somewhere, and eventually in the trash.

One wedding favor that bucks that trend is called The Pop Tag. In recent years it’s become kind of vogue for couples to create military-style dog tags that are stamped with their names. But dog tags themselves aren’t very useful (unless you’re in the military).

Pop Tags are brilliant in that they’re the same weight,shape, and size as standard dog tags, but they have a bottle opener built right in. It’s funny, but in the last month, I’ve counted about three times I’ve needed a bottle opened (once during a happy hour at work where we needed to open some beer bottles, one when I needed to open a bottle of Martinelli cider, and once when I had some Stewart’s soda from the supermarket). In all these cases I ended up using a set of keys to try to pry the top off the bottle, which always takes me about 10 minutes. One of these days I’ll break the key and not be able to get into my home.

The Pop Tab is cool in that it fits unobtrusively onto your keychain (or you can use it as a keychain itself). You’ll never find yourseif in a situation where you need to find a bottle opener.

Here’s what a Pop Tab looks like:

It’s about 1 1/2 inches long and made of solid stainless steel, the same size and weight as a real military dog tag. You can choose anything you want for the imprint, whether it’s a favorite quote, a name, or a date. And each tag can have a different message, so you can have a truly personalized keychain for each of your groomsmen or even each of your wedding guests! You can also request a chain to wear it like a real military style dog tag.

I heard about the Pop Tag a little too late for my own wedding (we ended up going to the M&M store and buying personalized Wedding Day M&Ms as well as giving each of our guests a nice little succulent plant in keeping with our botanical garden theme). But if you’re planning a wedding and need a truly unique idea for a gift that’s meaningful, attractive, AND useful, this is a great one that people will actually use. And it’s not chintzy nor cheaply produced like other promotional imprint items.

$1 from every Pet Tag sale is donated to PopTag’s local SPCA shelter to help animals!

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